Friday, February 21, 2014

A Guide For Hipsters: The 15 Coolest Novels

So you're a hipster and you live in Brooklyn, Camden Town, St Kilda or downtown LA. You've got your Oxfam cords, your Atari T shirt and your 1970's replica Adidas trainers (I've actually got these and they're great!) You're in the coffee place that no one knows about behind the stolen car chop-shop. It doesn't have Wi-Fi or comfortable furniture but it does have really good coffee. So you're there drinking the Bali Mother Temple Blend, sneaking admiring glances at your trainers, and checking out the other hipsters in the place. Some have Edwardian sideburns, some have full beards and as for the blokes...Sorry, old joke, couldn't resist. No, the girls are really cute and you're sitting there, worried that you're going to spoil the illusion of cool by bringing the wrong retro paperback out of your battered bike messenger bag. What novel is it ok to read that won't set the hipster alarm bells ringing? In the 1980s it was easier - Sartre, Camus, Henry Miller, Eudora Welty, Philip K Dick, a battered Penguin Classic. . ....But that shit don't work no more. It reeks of a set-book in uni or sixth form college and you're far too cool to be doing homework in here. So what does work? Here are some book suggestions and what to say to the curious guy/gal who - hopefully - asks you about your reading material:

1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. "It's so much funnier on the third reading."2. Crash - JG Ballard. "It's about this pervy guy called Ballard who meets this guy called Vaughn who wants to kill himself in an erotic car crash with Elizabeth Taylor's limousine. . .What? They made a movie out of it? I don't watch movies from the last 40 years."3. Platform - Michel Houellebecq. "It's a bit like Crash, actually, but without the cars, Ballard, or Elizabeth Taylor." 4. Red or Dead - David Peace. "It's like Fever Pitch, but, you know, good."5. The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton. "Yeah, I read the one that won the Booker. This is her earlier better, longer, less crowd-pleasing one." 7. The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem. "Its about this kid who lives Brooklyn in the 70's and this homeless dude gives him this ring that lets him fly. No, wait, come back, it's the greatest American novel of the last 20 years. . ." 8. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke. “What's it about? Uhm, well, aliens come to watch all the children on the Earth doing a conga dance that gets out of hand as they merge into a giant supercreature and sublime off into another dimension. He wrote it at the Chelsea Hotel if that helps explain things." 9. La Casa de los Espíritus - Isabel Allende. "Oh this? No, not really my cup of tea. I'm only reading it to improve my Spanish in preparation for my Ayahuasca rebirthing ceremony."10. Human Race Get Off Your Knees - David Icke. "Alice Walker's favourite book, apparently. . .Uhm, I think its fiction." 11. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth. “She hasn’t met all three of her suitors yet but I’m only on page 973.” 12. The History of Madness - Michel Foucault. "Ok, yeah, not really an novel, but here's an interesting fact about Foucault: he used to go to public lavatories in Paris, lie down in the urinal and have strangers piss on him. . .Why are you looking at me like that?" 13. The Cold Cold Ground: Adrian McKinty. "The best crime writer you've never heard of. . .Wait, you've heard of him? Jesus, that dude is so over."

40 comments:

Adrian,"The Jest "sounds like a blast. I looked up the story line in Wikipedia.The work sounds like a reprise of the 60's and 70's through a carnival mirror either reflecting A Bosch like triptych of those times or distorting it (those decades) to make their effects clearer.As for being hip or cool via your chart who knows it might work for some on the same wave length.I remember I once brought "Sun and Steel" to Museum of Modern Art in New York and only picked up a cold.Best Alan

Ha! I'm digging your posting innovation here, Adrian. Nice job mixing up the voice. If I'm still trying to get through Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity after a couple months, what does that make me? Ever read that? I got interested in it after Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs. I keep reading because somehow I think this supposed nonfiction technology stuff is good for me, but it's been slow going and some of it soars past over my head at high speed. Of course I've been distracted by Rinzler's comprehensive coffee-table behemoths on the making of the original Star Wars trilogy, so that has slowed me down some. I think you might love those too, if you have a magnifying glass and can manage to carry them home. I pre-ordered ITMIBG. Early March. Stoked.

Isnt Chomsky pretty much old hat? His line hasnt wavered in 50 years: "America is the great satan."

Havent read the new Lethem. Wife and mother in law both loved it though. Wife occasionally emails Lethem (not sure how that got started) and raved to him about the depiction of Queens in the 70s and 80s.

What's even more depressing is that Kiev seems to have bumped Venezuela out of the headlines. I guess we can't having two countries undergoing violent change in our minds at the same time. Not that it's a skill I much want to acquire.

Kiev/Ukraine is definitely winning the news battle in the UK, coming second only to the devastating shock of David Bowie expressing an opinion.

Of the hipster list, I've only read Vikram Seth, the Tibet one and Golden Gate, way back when, both of which I admired a lot - enjoyed even. But I'm old enough to remember "hipster" the first time round.

Wow- emailing Letham himself? Never been to Queens, but the depiction seems to ring true. Love the old seventies funk bands he pays homage to - my wife bought my an old vinyl record p,Ayer for Xmas, first album I bought was maggot brain by funkadelic. Hipsters - don t know they re born!

I don't think I've ever been surprised in my local. Most of the youngsters not dressed like Rachael are on their computers, rather than reading anything, interesting or not. Or course, so am I most of the time. I'm generally editing or blogging there. I do my reading at home or on my dinner break at work.

But seriously: I have been astounded by the lack of interesting books that my fellow coffee drinkers seem to read. I don't think I've seen any books on the table there that I might not have seen in the 1970s or '80s. I have seen Herman Hesse a time or two, David Foster Wallace just once, and Erich Fromm once. It's not a crowd terribly interested in interesting reading, I'm afraid. They talk a lot more about their music of their art than about other people's books.

This is very much a cafe like Orwell's pub The Moon Under The Water...

I was in the Ikea cafe a few weeks back and it had tons of hardback books by writers like Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy L Sayers but unfortunately they were all in Swedish. I couldnt really understand the point of this except as set decoration because Ive never met a Swede yet who couldnt speak perfect English.

I out-cool you all re. David F.Wallace... I have read all his fiction, his non-fiction, his short stories, his essays and even his biography. But the best one to attract the hipsters (well, O.K. aged hippies) is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Never fails.

Adrian, The very thing I was going to say but wasn't 100% sure of my recollection of Orwell's piece. I don't smoke but the missus does so we don't go to pubs much now. It was only tailor-mades bothered me, rollies were OK as they didn't burn with saltpetre and soon went out if left in the ashtray. Imagine trying to enforce "rollies only" though.

I remember a nice Billy Connolly rant about this cigar bar he used to go to in Vancouver being closed down by the city...what made it funny is that the bar was on the same block as a city funded building where heroin addicts could inject themselves in a safe environment.

Hi AdrianBill Polley here...Your ex geog teacher from Carrick.Just found 2 of your 3 Sean Duffy stories in Carrick Library and took them with me as Winter week reading while in Livigno, N. Italy. You do really capture the whole era very well. I liked the geography touches of the "belfast urban area" stuff too. Coronation Rd will neever seem quite the same again.Sorry to report that I went to the police station (to report a random pushbike left at my house in Ellis St) it now only operates from 1pm to 5pm ... no liquid lunches in the 'Oak' now !! How are the mighty fallen......Ironically the PC had downloaded your 1st Sean Duffy onto his kindle and was looking forward to reading it.I ordered your 3rd instalment from the Liby and received it today. Reading a John Le Carre at the mo (but almost tempted to stop for the last part of your trilogy - yes they are that good.

Very well done on capturing much of the essence of here in the 80's. I'll mebbe send you a link to my flicker site, though I've never had time to look at and scan in any images of the prints I took of the 80's, though there are some 70's ones transferred from the slides of the time.

Brilliant to have found your writings and I have enjoyed them so much, Thanks againBill Polley (retired Geography teacher)

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More about me

I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights.

In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year.

In mid 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids. My last book In The Morning I'll Be Gone won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award.

Pages

All Hail McKinty!

"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Times

"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch."

---The Guardian

"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Irish Times

"McKinty is a big new talent."

---The Daily Telegraph

"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."

---The Sunday Independent

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Glasgow Herald

"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."

---Kirkus Reviews

"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."

---Publishers Weekly

"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."

---The San Francisco Chronicle

"McKinty keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way."

---The Rocky Mountain News

"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."

---The Washington Post

"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."

---The Miami Herald

"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."

---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."

---The Chicago Sun-Times

"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."

---The Barcelona Review

"I really enjoyed [Dead I Well May Be’s] combination of toughness and a striking literary style. Both those things are evident in Hidden River. McKinty is going places."

---The Observer

"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."

---The Morning Star

"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."

---Booklist

"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."

---The Big Issue

"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."

---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."

---The Irish Examiner

"A virtual carnival of slaughter."

---The Wall Street Journal

"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be."

"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."

---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."

---The New York Times

"Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. The third in the trilogy The Bloomsday Dead should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better."

---CrimeSpree

"Until The Dead Yard's relentless, poignant ending you'll turn these pages as quickly as you can."

---The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."

What's Next For Me?

A couple more books, a few birthdays, some shuffleboard then a period spent in the digestive tract of earthworms, followed by molecular breakdown, the sun boiling into space, the heat death of the universe, atomic decay, perpetual darkness, a trillion years of nothingness and then, if we're lucky, brane collapse, a new singularity and a new Big Bang.